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Architecture Faculty Win Boston Society of Architects (BSA) Awards

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Architecture Professor of the Practice Sheila Kennedy, Lecturer Ryan Murphy, and Professor J. Meejin Yoon received awards at the Boston Society of Architects 2016 Design Awards, held January 28, 2016.

The Tozzer Anthropology Building (Cambridge, MA), designed by Kennedy & Violich Architecture, received the Honor Award for Design Excellence, Honor Level. KVA adapted a former library to include space for classrooms, offices, and a collaborative work space while utilizing the existing structural framework. The firm's material research unit, MATx, developed a "dedicated software program to calculate the intricate geometries of the corbeled masonry wall. The size and placement of every brick — even the spacing of the mortar bonds — were digitally determined," writes Ken Shulman.

The Sean Collier Memorial, designed by Höweler Yoon with Ochsendorf Dejong & Block, received an Honor Award for Design Excellence, Citation Level. The Memorial, completed in April 2015, is composed of thirty-two solid blocks of granite that form a five-way stone vault. The design of the memorial combines age-old structural techniques for spanning masonry vaults with new digital fabrication and structural computation technologies to create an unprecedented form. Methodologically, the design process for the Sean Collier Memorial involved a back and forth process between the construction of physical, analog, and digital models and simulations with digital tools with close collaboration between architects, engineers, masonry experts, and the fabricators.

Ceruzzi and Murphy Project's submission to the Guggenheim Helsinki competition received an Award for Unbuilt Architecture and Design. C&MP's project creates a surprising interior experience among a landscape of natural and architectural forms. "The perimeter of the museum is enclosed by a stone wall containing the museum galleries within its thickness. While the wall blocks all but a few orchestrated views of the city and harbor, its interior edge is highly transparent to allow view into and across the central space of the museum," explain C&MP.

Past architecture faculty members Nader Tehrani and Paul Lukez were also recognized: Nader Tehrani's firm NADAAA won an Honor Award in the Unbuilt category for their Bamiyan Cultural Centre and Paul Lukez Architecture's MDCO Simulation Center won in the Interior Architecture/Interior Awards category.

Please join us in congratulating these outstanding faculty. See the entire list of BSA honorees and more information about the awards on the BSA website.